Love & Folly

by Sheila Simonson

  Falk's smile was wry but not unkind. "I daresay you hit a patch of ice. You've broken your leg."

  "Oh, no!"

  "Yes. The shinbone. Neatish break, nothing fancy. But you had a bad bout of fever from lying out in the cold. The surgeon thinks you'll be up in a month."

  "A month!" Johnny groaned.

  The election. All the preliminaries would have been set in train within the month. He had meant to be at Clanross's side well before March. What curst luck. He reopened his eyes to find Colonel Falk watching him with a slight frown.

  "Kicking against the prods? I fancy you're hungry, but let's make you comfortable first."

  Johnny was surprised to find that he was hungry. Other even more urgent needs were also beginning to press. To his embarrassment Falk attended to them with despatch and no comment.

  Presently, when Johnny was feeling more the thing and had been propped in a half-upright position, he said haltingly, "I'm grateful to you, sir, but oughtn't you to leave sickroom chores to your servants..."

  Falk handed him a facecloth. "I thought I was uncommon deft for a one-handed paperhanger."

  "I didn't mean..."

  "Scrub."

  Johnny scrubbed, hoping his face did not betray the extent of his humiliation. His beard prickled.

  "My man, McGrath," Falk mused, "is just now escorting my daughter to her school and the housekeeper to the fishmonger's. His wife, who is the children's nurse, is upstairs with the baby and Harry. The baby is colicky and Harry has a cold. Phillida--that's the housemaid--is paring something, and, in any case, she would drop a basin on you or fall across your leg. Phillida is a trifle awkward. We do not permit her to enter sickrooms. So I rather think you're stuck with me. Unless you'd like me to summon Emily? My wife," he added, removing the cloth and handing Johnny a comb. "She fixing your tray."

  "I beg your pardon, sir. I've been a great deal of trouble to you."

  "You've caused us some anxiety, I'll allow. And I'm glad you've come out of the fever. Even with the splint in place, we had the devil of a time keeping your leg still. Especially, for some reason, at four in the morning."

  "Good God, how long was I out?"

  "Three days. And nights."

  Johnny shut his eyes, mortified. "You'll be wishing me in Jericho."

  "Not at all. I wish you right where you are. When you're feeling more the thing, I mean to put you to work."

  "Even so..."

  "Come, Dyott, it was an accident."

  Johnny bit his lip. "I know, but..."

  Falk smiled at him. "Only fancy what I'd be thinking if you'd taken a notion to break your right arm."

  In spite of his embarrassment, Johnny had to return the smile.

  Falk tidied the cloth away. A china pitcher and basin sat on the low chest of drawers by the head of the bed. "We'll rig a lap desk for you--"

  "Clanross!" Johnny interrupted, appalled.

  "I've writ Tom. And we found your traps at the Pelican."

  "How?"

  Falk had finished tidying the basin. He sat on a straight-back chair near the door. "I sent McGrath round to all the likely inns. And then to the unlikely ones. Did you know that the Pelican is a den of piety? Country curates and rural deans. No one else uses it."

  Johnny felt his cheeks flame. He was blushing like a maiden, and why not? The whole situation was damnably embarrassing. "My father is dean of Lincoln cathedral."

  "And he recommended the Pelican. I see. All our mysteries cleared up." Falk looked mildly disappointed.

  Not quite. "There was a boy."

  Falk's eyebrows rose.

  "When I woke. A little boy. He looked Spanish."

  "My son Tommy. His mother was Spanish." He rose and went to the desk.

  Johnny digested that. "I spoke to him but he didn't answer. I thought I was dreaming. When he vanished..."

  "Tommy does not hear."

  "He's deaf? Good God, I heard he'd been ill. He is Lord Clanross's godson, is he not? I am sorry."

  Falk was fiddling with the standish. "I posted him to warn me when you woke."

  "Does he not speak?"

  Falk straightened the pile of papers on the desk. "He does, but not often. I think being unable to hear his own voice confuses him."

  Johnny turned that over in his mind. "I daresay it must be frightening for him."

  "Yes."

  "How long..."

  Falk looked up. He was frowning painfully. "The children--all of them but the baby who was newborn-- fell ill in July. It was just measles. My wife was still rather weak and I didn't like to expose her or the infant, so I kept Emily from the sickroom. The McGraths and I nursed them. We were more anxious for Matt than for Tommy at first. Matt ran a high fever." He straightened and went to the bookcase, opening the glass front. After a moment he closed it again without removing a book. "When they recovered, we found that Tommy had lost his hearing."

  "I'm sorry," Johnny repeated, troubled by the older man's contained distress. "Measles!"

  Falk gave a short, unmirthful laugh. "That's what's so stupid. If it had been smallpox or scarlet fever or something more threatening..."

  He is afraid he could have done something to prevent his son's deafness, Johnny thought. What an appalling burden. He groped for something to say. Phrases about God's will his father surely would have found efficacious entered his mind--and stuck in his throat. Nothing, he thought grimly, will induce me to become a clergyman.

  After a moment Falk left off his restless pacing and resumed his seat by the door. "I have been teaching Tommy his letters. He could read a little and write his name before he fell ill. I thought if he could read and write with ease..."

  "That he might not lose his grasp of language? I see."

  Falk took a. deep breath. "He does very well, and he's beginning to understand what is said by watching the speaker's mouth. That is very encouraging, but I wish he would speak more often. His speech has lost something of clarity."

  "Still, if he understands... I see why you need help with your correspondence," he burst out. "Your work must have been seriously interrupted."

  Falk smiled a little. "That is one way of putting it. I've kept up with the correspondence relating to Tom's charity, but I'm behindhand with my blasted history. My publisher is squawking."

  "History? I thought you were a novelist, sir."

  "I am, by preference. Murray asked me to write a three-volume history of Marlborough's campaigns. In a moment of mental aberration, I agreed."

  Johnny felt his spirits rise. He had balked at wasting his time over a mere novel, but a history was a more respectable undertaking. "Surely you must find such work more gratifying--"

  "Must I?" Falk rubbed his forehead.

  "To be dealing with so important an event as the War of the Spanish Succession! Marlborough! Blenheim!"

  "Malplaquet! Close order drill! Lady Marlborough!" Falk was mocking him. "Frankly, I find it all exceedingly dull."

  Johnny stared.

  "I am a satirist, not an historian, but the climate for satire is not healthy these days. The thought of spending months in durance vile for taking the odd jab at Lord Liverpool gives one pause." Falk's mouth twisted in a wry grimace. "My publisher fancied he--and I--would be safer rehearsing pointless marches and countermarches where the outcome was known and the politicians safely dead. It appears that the publick have a boundless thirst for dead campaigns. I cannot imagine why."

  "I see," said Johnny, though he didn't, precisely. "But a history..."

  "I daresay mine will be the two hundredth recapitulation of the battle of Blenheim," Falk said flatly. "The only positive consequence of publishing three fusty volumes of the stuff will be their effect on my overdraught."

  "I cannot believe that, sir."

  Falk's mouth relaxed in a grin. "You will when you've copied a few chapters?"

  "My word, it's early days to be speaking of copying, Richard." A lady in a lace cap and striped spencer appeared in the doorway. She
carried a tray, and she had brown curls and merry blue eyes.

  Falk had risen. He said dryly, "Mrs. Falk. Dyott. If you were in any doubt."

  She advanced with the tray held before her like a guerdon. "Do help the boy up, Richard. Two more pillows, I think. How do you do, Mr. Dyott? You must call me Emily because I fully intend to call you Johnny."

  Her gentle chatter washed over Johnny, very soothing. Falk's ministrations were less soothing--the leg ached abominably--but in the end Johnny squirmed to a position that would make feeding himself possible. The effort left him limp. Colonel Falk took his leave. Johnny ate. Emily Falk watched him critically.

  When he had finished she removed the tray, set it on the chair, and swept up a few errant crumbs of toast. The beef broth had been excellent.

  "Better?"

  "Much. Thank you."

  She smiled. "But your leg is hurting again and you have a strong desire for solitude. I shall leave you in peace, but first you must take a glass of the apothecary's vile potion. It is mostly laudanum, I fancy, and should ease the pain."

  Johnny considered protesting. Laudanum would also put him to sleep. He did not like to be quacked, but he felt quite exhausted, suddenly, and the leg did hurt. "Very well, ma'am."

  "Emily," she corrected gently. She measured a spoonful of medicine from a small brown bottle into a glass of water. The water turned milky. "I am glad to see you awake at last."

  Johnny drank the potion.

  She beamed at him. "There. That should make you more comfortable in a trice."

  Johnny blinked. "Thank you..."

  But she had disappeared as suddenly as she had come.

  The Falk family does a good line in vanishing acts, he thought rather crossly. Prestidigitous. Presently he drowsed off with visions of Blenheim and Peninsular urchins floating in his fuddled head. Clanross was saying something earnest about Reform. Johnny strained to understand his point but couldn't help thinking how odd his employer looked in a long curled wig.

  4

  Jean stared at the young man and her heart thumped in her throat. For a shaming moment she thought she might faint.

  Owen Davies was beautiful. Why had no one said how beautiful he was? Not above the middle height, he was proportioned like a marble Mercury, but he moved with the grace of some sleek cat of the mountains. He wore Hessians, and his primrose inexpressibles clung to his thighs, moulding the long muscles. The conventional bottle green coat and grey waistcoat did little to tame the wild abandon of the carelessly knotted kerchief he wore in place of a cravat. His fair hair hung long and tousled, with just enough curl to tip under where it met his collar, and his mouth was exquisitely carved, mobile and sensitive. Though he affected no jewellery, his agate green eyes glowed with a light of their own.

  "Lady Jean Conway," Elizabeth was saying. "My sister."

  Jean's hand floated up of its own accord. When Mr. Davis touched her fingertips, her arm tingled to the shoulder with electrical warmth.

  He bent over her hand, brushing her knuckles with his lips. As he straightened, he met her eyes. A wordless message passed between them. Then he was making his bow to Maggie and the sensation passed. But Jean knew her life had been transformed.

  Owen Davies. A librarian? Nonsense. He was a poet, with the soul of a poet in his speaking eyes and all the wild music of Wales in his light tenor voice. He was murmuring civil phrases to the others--Maggie, Miss Bluestone, Cecy Wharton who had come from Hazeldell to take tea--but Jean heard only the music of his voice, not the sense.

  Stiffly she reseated herself on the sofa and watched as the party reassembled with Mr. Davies on Elizabeth's right, a place of honour he assumed with no unbecoming hesitation. He accepted a glass of sherry from the tray Fisher offered, and sat sipping and listening, with a faint curl of his sculpted mouth, a faint droop of his eyelids, as Elizabeth spoke of his parents.

  The Davieses of Earl's Brecon could not be his parents, not the catarrhal rector and his prim wife. So splendid a creature must have sprung from another race entirely. Jean had been rereading McPherson's Oisin. Vague images of the riders of the wind, the pale, unearthly Sidhe, flickered in her mind's eye. A changeling? Perhaps that was not the right term. A figure certainly from another time, his alabaster skin still tinged from exposure to the chill air outside and his hair touched by the snow-laden wind.

  Jean shivered deliciously.

  "...and you must take your mama a packet of my tisane of birch leaves. She asked for it when I last saw her," Miss Bluestone was saying with dreadful, prosy cheer. "I meant to send it by Jem any time this sennight but I kept forgetting. I daresay your father is feeling more the thing by now, however"

  "Yes," Mr. Davies said, eyes half-lidded. "I believe papa goes on very well, ma'am, but you must pardon me. I've told my parents I must be about my work. They cannot expect me to call on them often."

  Jean sat straighter, listening now to meaning as well as sound. So he would stay at Brecon. Elizabeth had not been sure.

  Elizabeth smiled. "Clanross won't expect you to keep your nose to the grindstone day and night, Mr. Davies."

  "You misunderstand me. I mean my work. My poetry," he added when Elizabeth cocked her head quizzically.

  "Do you write sonnets?" Maggie interposed.

  Oh, Maggie. Jean quivered.

  He looked at her twin. "Rarely, Lady Margaret. My métier is the ode. And the satirical ballad, though that, I fear, I pen merely for my own amusement these days."

  "Why? Won't anyone buy your ballads?"

  Jean went hot, then cold. Maggie had a prosaic soul, Miss Bluestone had been forced to concede that when the twins were still in her schoolroom, but even Maggie ought to know better than to speak of buying and selling to a poet.

  Davies favoured Jean's twin with a slight, sad smile. "A bookseller, do you mean? They tell me my poetry is caviar to the general." The sculpted lips took a wry twist. "I don't even think of a commercial publisher, Lady Margaret. My odes circulate in manuscript. Some friends were kind enough to have a volume of my political verses published privately, however. That is the safe course these days." His lip curled again at the word "safe" and he took a sip of sherry as if to counter a bad taste.

  Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. "I take it your sentiments are, er, radical."

  "I am a neo-Pantisocrat," he said simply. "Anathema to Liverpool and that lot."

  Miss Bluestone leaned forward, her fichu bobbing. "Do you mean, sir, that your work is seditious?"

  The brilliant eyes blazed. "I recognise no nation but humanity, ma'am, and there my loyalties lie. If that be sedition, well, I am ready to suffer the penalty."

  Jean thought he looked magnificent. She let her breath out in a long trembling sigh.

  Miss Bluestone blinked.

  Cecilia Wharton, who had been nibbling obliviously at a slice of currant cake, broke the silence. "I like this very well, Elizabeth, upon my word. There is so little I can eat these days without discomfort. Pray tell Mrs. Smollet I must have the receipt." Mrs. Wharton was in an interesting condition for the third time and large as a house.

  Elizabeth smiled at her. "You shall have it if it's not one of her mother's. Those receipts she refuses to part with. Mr. Davies, I can see that your presence will enliven our company. Perhaps you'll be kind enough to read us your work one of these evenings. We're all fond of poetry, especially Jean."

  Oh, Elizabeth. Jean shrank into her bones, but Davies cast her a look so eloquent of hope and uncertainty that she contrived a smile for him. "I love poetry of all things."

  "Wordsworth, I daresay."

  What was the right reply? Hang Wordsworth. Jean cleared her throat. "I...often...prefer the older poets."

  He frowned. "Carewe?"

  "Herrick, sometimes, and Campion."

  His eyes lit. "'Follow your saint, follow with accents sweet. Haste thee, sad notes, fall at her flying feet...'"

  Jean gulped. "Yes indeed. And Spenser."

  He set his sherry glass on
the tray and leaned toward her. "The Amoretti?"

  "And The Faerie Queen." She groped in her memory. "The Shepherd's Calendar."

  "Certainly I'll read for you. It will be a great pleasure," he murmured, and she was sure he spoke to her alone.

  Elizabeth placed her teacup on the tray with a rattle. "Splendid. Jean and Maggie, if you will show Mr. Davies the library, I'll see to his room. Cecy, Miss Bluestone, I know you too well to stand on ceremony. Pray make yourselves cozy by the fire. I must just have a word with my housekeeper."

  "Don't forget the receipt." Cecilia was cutting herself another slice of the cake.

  "To be sure. I'll be with you again in a trice." Elizabeth sounded crisp, almost angry, but in what cause Jean knew not.

  Jean stared, and Elizabeth stared back, unsmiling.

  Maggie jumped up. "The book room is gothick, Mr. Davies. You'll love it. Come on, Jean."

  Jean rose and so perforce did Mr. Davies. He took a polite farewell of Miss Bluestone and Mrs. Wharton, and then they were free of tisanes and currant cake. And of Elizabeth's mood, whatever it might signify.

  Maggie seemed wholly unconscious of Jean's heightened sensibility as the three young people traversed the long gallery of the library. She was giving Mr. Davies a housekeeper's tour, pointing out ancestral portraits and bits of classical marble as they went, and her cheerful chatter sounded like the tweedling of bagpipes to Jean's sensitive ears.

  Jean hoped Mr. Davies would not despise her twin. He was being polite, but so attuned was Jean to his mood she could sense his impatience. For the first time in her life she wished her sister elsewhere. Her disloyalty clogged her throat so that she could not have spoken to save her life.

  When they finally entered the vast gloomy bookroom, even Maggie fell silent.

  The architecture of Brecon was Palladian. To seventeenth-century taste had been added eighteenth-century wealth, and the effects were grand--or grandiose. Marble doorways and vast, richly ornamented plasterwork ceilings, a recent one by Angelica Kauffman, showed in brilliant contrast to walls hung in intense silks, green and watered blue and rose. Miles of parquet shone beneath narrow Wilton carpets. But the library, panelled in dark wood and crammed with bookcases and tables heavy enough to sink a poet's heart, was a Jacobean throwback.